The Time for a Massive Anti-War Movement is Now

An alleged new ‘chemical incident’ in Syria reminds of a similar series of events we saw last year. We are told to believe that each time the U.S. pulls back from the war on Syria the Syrian government is responding with a ‘chemical attack’ that pulls the U.S. back in.

If you’re genuinely against U.S. wars for profit, power and empire the current moment represents our best opportunity to push back aggressively and launch a real grassroots anti-war movement. The entrenched forces who’ll stop at nothing to get their war with Iran and Russia going seem to believe that time’s running out. As such, they’re resorting to increasingly comical and preposterous interpretations of “events” to get their conflagration going. The war sales-pitch has become increasingly desperate and nonsensical, which provides us with a window of opportunity to push back.

It’s hard to keep track of the timeline of events these days, but it was just last week that the British foreign office was caught deleting a tweet in which it had falsely claimed it confirmed the nerve agent used in the Skripal poisoning had been produced in Russia.

Boris Johnson is facing embarrassing questions over his claims that Russia had produced the Salisbury nerve agent after it emerged that the Foreign Office had deleted a tweet blaming Moscow for the attack.

With the foreign secretary already under pressure over his remarks two weeks ago that a Porton Down scientist had been “absolutely categorical” that the novichok had originated in the country, Jeremy Corbyn accused Johnson of “completely exceeding the information he had been given” after the emergence of the deleted tweet.

But Johnson later hit back, accusing the Labour leader of “playing Russia’s game”.

The deletion, immediately seized on by the Russian embassy, has deepened the government’s difficulties after British scientists at the UK’s defence research laboratory announced on Tuesday that they had not established that the nerve agent used to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal had been made in Russia.

As I noted at the time:

Let me get this straight. The U.S. expelled 60 Russian officials based on fake news.

Fortunately for the UK government, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad decided to do something completely suicidal and entirely against his best interests in the immediate aftermath of the Skripal narrative falling apart. How incredibly convenient for those itching to get a war with Iran and Russia going.

So where do things stand? For those of us against imperial war, the current moment offers the best opportunity I can recall to build a real movement. The Syrian (and by extension Iran and Russia) war sales-pitch has become so clownish and desperate a significant percentage of people simply aren’t falling for it.

I’ve been extremely critical on these pages of Trump supporters I call “cheerleaders” who always make excuses for everything Trump does because they’ve become enamored with a cult politician and can’t admit they were wrong about him. The exact same thing happened with Obama’s cheerleaders, and their stubborn refusal to admit the obvious about his imperial, oligarch-coddling policies gave him the space he needed to further entrench the corrupt power structure in American political and economic life. Whether Obama or Trump, it’s always a President’s cult supporters who give them the needed space to push through the worst policies.

Interestingly, this latest push for war with Syria, Iran and Russia finally seems a bit much for many Trump supporters to stomach. I’ve seen considerable evidence that this is the case over the past 24 hours and I hope it continues. The following poll, conducted by Trump’s favorite show Fox and Friends, is particularly revealing.

Should the U.S. take action against Syria for their reported use of deadly chemical weapons?

As of the time of publication, over 50,000 people voted, with 68% against U.S. military action. This is encouraging and highlights how crucial the current moment is to build pressure against another idiotic and disastrous war.

*Important Note: Since this post was published the poll mentioned above took a bizarre and shady turn. At 190,000 votes now, 68% suddenly favor war. This implies nearly 100% of the last 140,000 votes were pro war. Highly implausible. We can now be certain Twitter polls can and will be rigged once they become high profile enough.

For more see:

The total vote count on that poll basically tripled in a couple of hours, with nearly 100% of the new votes coming in pro war.

If Trump voters who claim to be anti-war provide Trump with cover to proceed with a neocon foreign policy, then that’s exactly what you’ll get, especially since that’s also what “the Resistance” and the D.C. bipartisan cadre of imperialists want. The only way to make Trump really sweat is if a unified front consisting of his base, the anti-war left, libertarians and others push back aggressively and simultaneously. I think the time is right for such a movement.

The biggest obstacle we face in achieving this end is ourselves since the American public is all too often its own worst enemy. Too much of the U.S. population is so polarized and convinced their team is right about everything, they’ll never unite to protest against something as monumentally significant as imperial war if they feel the “other side” is also against it. This attitude is extremely childish, but it’s also pervasive. The American public’s been so divided and conquered, so tribal and belligerent against those from the other political tribe, we can’t even come together to push back on an issue as existential as regime change war.

We have a great opportunity to do so now, but will we take the bull by the horns and unite, or will we once again be easily fragmented into tribes the moment the media decides to inflame some new wedge issue?

I don’t know the answer, but I do know that until Americans from various political ideologies can put other differences aside and unite on an extremely important issue, the public will continue to be easy prey for those who really run the show.

As I noted a few weeks ago:

The one mass political movement we need that could cross grassroots ideological lines is one strongly against imperial neocon U.S.foreign policy.

I’m not naive enough to think an anti-war movement will prevent the next disastrous imperial war, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a key strategic goal of the citizenry. Unless the American public learns to stop being so tribal, the imperialist oligarchy will continue to do whatever it wants. Forming an anti-war movement capable of crossing ideological lines would be one thing that could truly terrify the entrenched status quo and put them on notice.

Our real power as humans doesn’t come from voting for the latest false prophet who will inevitably betray us. Our real power will be discovered once we’re able to look beyond our differences, when we stop demanding ideological conformity on every issue and come together to oppose something meaningful that clearly goes against the best interests of 99.99% of us. One of those issues is imperial war, and the time to come together is now.

One Response to The Time for a Massive Anti-War Movement is Now

Ah, yes… we need an “anti-war movement”. Are you suggesting that we march in circles holding peace signs?

We ARE an effective anti-war movement, because instead of marching in circles, we’re exposing the bankers who fund and instigate all the wars, which actually has a chance at stopping all the wars, instead of just crying about the latest violent outrage.